Black Californians should get $350,000 to help shrink the racial wealth gap and right historical wrongs, a landmark California reparations task force has heard.

Max Fennell, a 35-year-old businessman and former professional triathlete, told the committee the money should be given to all black California residents. He argued that black-owned businesses should receive grants of about $250,000 and 15-20 acres of land to help further boost black wealth during the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals' public hearing.

Baraka Davis traveled from Texas to deliver her message to California’s Reparations Task Force Wednesday.

“Texas is watching each and every one of you,” she said.

Davis, 43, was one of several people who came to Oakland City Hall for the first of the committee’s two-day December meeting. Their presence reflected the historic stakes of the group’s state-sponsored effort to study and develop reparations for the generational harms of anti-Black racism.

In California, they see an opportunity for overdue redress, after centuries of disappointment.

Our neighbors to the west are about to embark on a giant political and socioeconomic experiment to put money behind the movement that launched the 2020 summer of protests.

California is one of a dozen states that now aim to address historic wrongs against African Americans through a massive transfer of wealth to Black communities.

Momentum for reparations drew strength from the gale-force winds created by the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd. That outrage has led to progressive Democrats across America pushing reparations in cities, states and in Congress.